The Fallen (A Sons of Wrath Prequel) (21 page)

He nodded and, carefully slipping his hands beneath her body, lifted her from the shadows.

The small, rounded glass hit Xander’s fingertips and he clutched the vial. At last. He’d found what he’d been looking for in the black bag.

The orange swirls of Demortis glowed in the dark cellar. With one stab, a bastard could disintegrate into absolute death.

The time had finally come.

He glanced once more at the medical documents.

HOMOCIDE. SUICIDAL IDEATION. RESTRAINTS. TWENTY-FOUR HOUR WATCH.

Xander lifted the girl from the bike, prepared to carry her into the apartment building where her sister apparently lived on campus. “You need a doctor.”

Her eyes widened and she pushed back. “No, please. I’m okay.” The quiet, shaky quality of her voice told him the opposite. “Karinna will take care of me. I’m okay.”

“I can’t just leave you. Not after …” He shook his head. “It’s not right.”

Something changed in her expression—her eyes, tight with fear, slackened to softness, the knit of her brow eased. She licked her lips and stared up at him, inched one step closer. “Will you help me?” Her voice turned calm and devoid of the helplessness from moments before.

As if she’d turned entirely into someone else in that very moment.

“Help you?” He stared down at her full lips and brushed a finger across the split where her piercing had been ripped out. It healed with his touch.

The girl kissed his finger. “I just need one answered prayer.”

Hustling through the house, Xander slammed through the front door and, wings outstretched, hit the sky.
Karinna
.

He forced himself not to panic as he sliced through the cover of darkness blanketing the city beneath him. His mind swam with a million images of what the night would bring, and he wished he could go back to the day before, when he’d held her in his arms and she seemed at peace.

He needed to get to her.

First, though, he had to make a stop.

A promise to Karinna—one he’d easily have blown off if he hadn’t known it’d mean even more to her than vengeance. A neon marquee flashed 11:30pm. The auction would start at midnight, so he had time. ‘Sides that, Hasziel and an army of angels would be tearing down the club, if they hadn’t already. She’d be safe.

No, fuck that.
Karinna needed him. To hell with stopping anywhere before saving her first.

Promise me you’ll do this
, her voice—a memory—chimed inside his head.
No matter what, it means everything to me.

Eyes squinting, nostrils flaring with frustration, he kept on—to fulfill his promise to Karinna.

Xander hit the pavement of
Sacred Heart
’s parking lot in a crouch, then rose to a stand and glanced upward. From where he stood, the window remained lit—the only one in the facility illuminated against the darkness. He leaped toward it—two stories above ground level. Like the lock didn’t exist, he opened the window and climbed inside.

Karinna’s mother lay in the bed. Her whispers carried across the room.

Prayers.

With wings still outstretched, Xander approached.

She rolled onto her back, eyes wide, lip trembling. “Oh, angel. Have you come for me?”

Xander bit back the fury inside. The woman before him had been partially responsible for the most unimaginable crimes against her daughter. “Confess.”

She furrowed her brow. “I’m afraid—”

“Your sins. Confess them.”

Reluctantly, she gave the sign of the cross. “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. My last confession was a week ago.” She swallowed. “I saw … a man. He came to offer me communion yesterday afternoon.” Her eyes squinted. “Oh, forgive me, I’d never seen a more handsome face—”

“She was raped. Beaten. Left for dead.” Xander kept his voice as lifeless as the words felt, piercing his heart.

The woman drew a sharp breath. Her mouth gaped and closed as if she’d wanted to say something.

“The police had never seen such brutality. You defended him.”

Her gaze fell away. “I didn’t know.”

Xander dropped forward, arms at either side of her body, and pressed his forehead against hers. “Lies,” he gritted.

Her body quaked beneath him, chest high with a captive breath. “She’s always been … difficult. As a child, she’d parade around in her underpants in front of all her uncles. It was …
unnatural
.”

His hands balled into fists. “Confess your sin.”

“I … I didn’t …”

“Confess your sin!” He bellowed the words, and she startled, her body stiffening. Xander stood up from the bed and paced, arms crossed over his chest.

“I told the police … she’d wandered off. She’d been missing.” A tear trickled down her cheek from her good eye. “It was that cult he’d joined. The Sadismen. He told me that if I said a word, he’d sell us, ship us off somewhere in Europe as slaves. So I told the police what I had to. That her father was innocent.”

“For years, he took in young girls. For
them
. Handing them over like cattle to a slaughterhouse.” Xander ground his teeth together. For all the effort of trying to keep from smothering the woman, his muscles burned with the urge to watch the life drain from her face. “And, still … she claims to love you.”

The woman broke into a sob. “Oh, my poor Lola.” She lifted wrinkled hands to her face and covered her eyes. “What have I done? Forgive me.”

“Karinna forgives you.”

She shook her head. “Karinna was … an imagined friend. Lola used to … call her a sister. Whenever she got in trouble, she’d blame it on her
sister
, Rin.” The woman gave a saddened smile. “Why can’t
Rin
follow the rules? Why does
Rin
taunt father?” She shook her head. “Oh, it angered him.”

Xander tossed the gold necklace.

Lip quivering, she lifted the delicate chain from the sheets where it landed beside her. The Saint Christopher pendant dangled from between her fingers as she lay, holding it up to her eye. “I gave it to her when she left home.”

“Lolita is dead. And, by God, if Karinna hadn’t killed her bastard father herself, I’d take great pleasure in his sufferance.” Xander stared down, wishing he could snap her throat. “You’ve confessed your sins. You’ve yet to be judged.”

The woman broke into sobs once more. “I do … love her. Very much.”

Without wasting any more time, Xander slipped back through the window and into the darkness.

Cityscape passed in a blur below him as Xander flew through the air, headed toward
Hard Limits
. All of them would die. Every one of their members played some role in using and abusing girls. Karinna, included. The place would burn—and all of them would burn with it.

Touching down, he tugged the Sig from his holster, and stalked toward the front entrance. The peephole slid to the side and Xander booted the door, tearing the wood off the hinges. Jed scrambled to his feet from where he sat on the other side, and Xander put a bullet in his chest and skull for good measure.

Without breaking stride he entered the club. The usual members still fucked women on swings, uninterrupted by his presence or the macabre that lay on the other side of the door in a bloody heap. Once he had Karinna, Xander would set fire to the hellhole.

He trod toward the offices, kicking down each door as he went.

Ian’s. Empty. Jimmy’s. Empty.

Bodies jostled and jerked to either side of him as he pushed through the crowd toward the dungeons.

With a raise of his hand, Xander shot the gun in the air three times. The room fell silent, including the music. He swung the gun around, pointed at all of the mostly white-masked faces in the room. “You’ve got three minutes to get the fuck out.”

After only a second’s pause, the throng sprang into motion and half-naked bodies scrabbled for the door.

He continued on toward the dungeons, booting each door from its hinge as he searched for Karinna.

Warmth pulsed beneath his skin.
Close
. He reached the last door on the right and busted through.

A woman lay bloodied and battered on the bed. Unmoving.

In the corner, a man sat huddled, whimpering, covered in blood.

“I … I took it too far. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean … she just wanted … oh, God. Oh, God, forgive me.”

Xander approached the bed, heart jack-hammering inside his chest.

Ian’s blonde escort from earlier in the night lay dead.

CHAPTER 21

A creak of the door signaled Karinna’s captors had reached the entrance of the basement, where she, and God knew how many other girls, remained trapped. Heavy footfalls tapped out a slow, lazy cadence down the staircase, echoing through the basement. One set, judging the clarity of each tap.

Karinna rubbed the back of her nape, over the scarred tissue. How many times had Xander touched it? A subtle reminder that she’d chosen to ignore. As if the scar had never existed. And yet, Karinna had been the one to rip the silver clasp right out of her own spine.

From inside her corset, she pulled the picture she’d found in Xander’s jacket. A smile tugged at her lip as she bent back the half she’d convinced herself had been torn away. Doctor Toliver’s smiling face stared out at her. Her psychiatrist from Sacred Heart Asylum—the one who’d first recognized what others hadn’t and tried to
save
Lita by killing Karinna off with medications and therapies after she’d slaughtered her own father—the first man to lay his hands on Lita.

She tucked the picture back inside her corset.

Sweet Xander. All he’d ever tried to do was help her remember. Who could blame his harsh methods? The mind-fucking. Cigarette burns, knives. He almost had her the night he left her alone in the dark, though. Of all the torture she’d endured during her capture, the worst was being tied up and left that way.

An object set into motion remained in motion, though, and even Xander knew she had no intentions of letting it go. She’d been turned into a machine of vengeance. Wouldn’t stop until every one of the bastards died at her hands—at any cost.

Crashing on the other side of the door, as though something had been thrown against the concrete, let her know her captor was close.
Almost time
.

One might say that, being a stripper, she’d asked to be imprisoned in the depths of a cellar with a houseful of maniacal, sadistic monsters.

She could’ve spent years blaming herself, as she had when her father and all those faceless men nearly killed her as a child. White masks, staring down at her, shrouded in black with outstretched hands. Touching. Scraping. Digging at her innocence with a vengeance.

Vengeance.

She could’ve drowned her misery in bullets and deep cuts, as she’d done for most of her teenage years.

Instead, she’d chosen a different kind of revenge. The kind her father promised she’d never see come to fruition.

Find the faces behind the white masks. Kill them all.

She’d always been smart.

Karinna, that was.

Lolita, on the other hand, didn’t care much for books. She preferred a carefree life. One without rules. One that embraced sexuality and didn’t fear pain.

Fuck the world and get wasted.

Had she not allowed herself to become a victim so often, she might’ve lived an exciting life. Casual flings. No responsibility.

Her weakness?

She loved. And by loving, she’d allowed herself to be vulnerable.

Poor, helpless Lolita.

Though, neither one of them saw Xander coming.

The plan for vengeance almost soured the night she’d been taken captive at the warehouse—not even close to killing her true enemy. The same night Lolita met Xander for the first time; felt his protective embrace and knew that she could do anything, go anywhere, and he’d be there. Watching. Always watching.

How easily she fell for him.

Love clouded her vision. Kept her from the objective.

Forced Karinna to take the reins.

As strong as Lolita had always been, a third capture would shatter her, leave her curled into herself and susceptible. Vengeance fell to Karinna. To protect Lolita, she had to send her away. Kill her off. Make sure she never emerged from her hiding place deep inside Karinna’s mind. The monsters had to know she’d died. Believe they’d sent her running straight to hell by hanging herself.

She stared down at her bare wrist.

Xander wouldn’t find her again.

She’d already caught on to the bracelet and its meaning, as she’d stood in the club restroom with Ian’s escort and traded one for the other. Xander would trace the bracelet right to the woman.

By the time he reached her, Karinna might very well be dead. Hopefully, she’d have killed the one man she knew held the strings of fate. She’d gladly hand over her life to watch a blade slice through his throat.

The man behind the snuff films. The man behind the white mask.

Ian Portaine.

Karinna refocused on the approaching steps.

A glance toward the shadows showed the girl in chains, trembling, whimpering, frightened.

She lifted her own hands. In the darkness, they remained steady. With a twist on the balls of her feet, she faced the wall and tugged at a loose brick. Lying against the mortar, the silver glint of the knife Xander had snuck inside awaited.

One answered prayer. He never failed her.

The purity of the metal glistened in the dark cellar. Unearthly steel. Xander told her that it was the only metal that could break the skin of the Fallen, and she exhilarated in the fact it hadn’t been discovered. She clutched the hilt of it and replaced the brick, turning in time to be hefted by her hair.

“Time to prep you, bitch. Dogs need a leash.” The butcher squeezed her cheeks, pressing his fat, slimy lips to hers. “Huh? You want to be
my
bitch tonight? What’s that? You’re in heat?” His hands drifted down between her thighs, his fingers awkwardly probing her cleft. “Good.”

She grimaced, biting back the bile inching up her throat, and clamped her lips shut.

Not yet.

Brown, almost black eyes, dilated, turned carnal. Lifeless. He backed her into the wall, pressing her body against the blade still flat inside her palm. “I don’t like sloppy leftovers. I’ll fuck you first. Before any of the others.”

Karinna slid against the wall, pretended to protest. With her weapon hand behind her back, she kicked at her captor, who did nothing but laugh. Body crushing hers against the jagged stone, he slowed his movements, caressing her breasts through the T-shirt until a painful pinched twist of her nipple forced an outcry from her.

“I can’t tell you how much I love that sound,” he whispered. He bit into her shoulder, inciting another cry, and shoved his fingers inside of her. His teeth dislodged as he pumped. “Fucking dry as dirt.” He plunged his fingers into his mouth. “Should’ve brought my blade.” A disgusting lick of his fat, slimy tongue along her cheek forced a shudder. “Blood makes the best lubricant.”

Unarmed. Stupid fuck
.

Karinna slammed the first jab straight into his belly, bending him forward as he took a step back. Wide eyes and the obnoxious gape of his mouth, which made her want to cram a baseball bat down his throat, confessed that he hadn’t anticipated much of a fight.

Really stupid fuck.

She parried the next jab into his chest, twice, before grabbing hold of his crown. He pushed against her, knocking the blade from her hand, and whacked her across the cheek.

Light exploded behind her eyes as she flew back into the wall and slid to the floor.

His laughter echoed in and out as she patted the floor and found the hilt of her blade. A slice across his shins had him yelping like a wounded pup. With both hands, she buried the metal in his knee cap.

“Fucking whore!” He buckled to the floor beside her and Karinna quickly climbed atop of him.

She yanked his head back, exposing the width of his fleshy throat, and slid the blade across. Blood spurted from the wound, hitting her face. He brought both hands to his squirting neck and with an open-mouthed seizure, eyes rounded, the life left his body.

Dead.

One down.

She rose from his body and stepped toward the girl, who shielded her eyes with her arms. A cut through her binds slid like silk beneath the blade.

“Kill me.” The female looked up to her, bones prominent through her skin. Her body shook, so fragile, like a leaf ready to break its hold of a thin branch, tears spilling down her cheeks. “They took everything from me. I will never be who I was. Just kill me.”

Karinna knelt in front of her, lifted her chin, and focused on her eyes. “Then, become someone else. I’m not killing you.”

She didn’t wait for the girl’s response. Karinna stood up and left her there, venturing deeper into the cellar. Like walking through a haunted house, she kept up her guard, waiting for anything to pop out at her. Room after darkened room revealed some level of emptiness, and a whole lot of horror. The women who, like her, had been tortured and raped. Murdered. Never found. Their blood spattered every one of the walls.

Karinna ground her teeth at the thought of her
sister
suffering such torment. Through the darkness, she found the chimney—the one where the camera had been stowed—and knelt beside it. Opening the door to the cleanout, she dug her hands into the ashes. A solid thump met her palm, and Karinna lifted the small camcorder from the dust.

What if it doesn’t work? What if the ash has destroyed it?

She stared down at the small screen. The blackness beckoned her. With an unsteady finger, Karinna pressed the play button.

The screen lit up, and the screams forced her to cover her mouth as she watched vile acts performed on the Asian girl, while one of the two captors dismembered her.

Panic rose from deep inside Karinna’s gut. Her breaths arrived shaky. She’d seen the girl, caged. Awaiting death, and just like all of them, devoid of hope.

The whole fucking world went about its business outside the walls that hid where the girl had been mutilated in her own silent hell.

Karinna muffled a wheeze of sobbing and bit the palm of her hand, holding back a scream.
Don’t. Don’t do it
. The warning played over and over inside her mind.
Don’t do it.

She hit the fast forward button and nearly dropped the camera when, in the next scene, she saw herself sprawled across the wooden bench, screaming, as the black shirt male had his way with her.

Limbs weakened. Vomit poured from her mouth, and she bent forward, the camera clicking against cement. Heave after heave purged the previous night’s dinner all over the basement floor.

The screaming stopped.

Trembling, Karinna lifted the camera to see Xander removing his shirt then bandaging her wounds before holding her in a tight embrace. Her heart warmed at the sight of him. Safe again. Whole. 

She stuffed the camera back inside the chimney and took a moment to draw in a few long breaths.

Let’s do this.

“Well, hello.” The voice halted her movement.

Karinna craned her neck to find Ian Portaine, and three other men, standing over her with smiling, lifeless expressions.

Lolita’s whimper echoed inside her head at the same time as fear clenched Karinna’s lungs.

***

Xander flew over the streets of Detroit, his frantic mind racing.

Looking back, Karinna’s unpredictability had put him on edge the moment he met her. Unlike Lolita, she seemed not to know him or remember anything about the attack. Lolita fell into a slumber and Karinna awoke from it, with no knowledge, no fear—oblivious to the horrors she’d endured and hell-bent on vengeance. In fact, she’d done the unthinkable, giving up everything, all she’d worked for, to seek retribution, without any idea why she sought it.

Like watching a child burn herself on the stove and come back a second time, without any regard for consequences.

How could Xander stop that?

Odd the way the human mind worked. How a woman could live one life and, in one swoop, assume another. Karinna had become so entrenched in her objective that she’d completely forgotten about Lolita, as well, pushing her so deep inside the dark compartments of her mind that the girl really had died inside of her.

Xander’d had to be willing to place himself amongst the very men she loathed. To save her twice, he’d had to show her, and that had meant becoming the very monster Lolita feared. He’d had to bring Lolita back from death and force Karinna to remember all of it.

Karinna.

The greatest mind-fuck he’d ever pulled was forcing the little girl to remember the heat on the stove and scaring her into staying away from it.

As for the pain and torment—if the medical records were any indication, Lita seemed to thrive off it. Piercings. Cutting. Asphyxiation. She spoke to the damaged piece of shit inside of him, whittled down from years of watching girls like her strung up and abused. Giving in to the monster inside came easier than Xander had hoped.

At least Lolita brought some balance to the bat-shit crazy motives of Karinna.

Fearless Karinna.

He couldn’t just lay the past out for her. She’d have resisted. Shut down. Reawakened as someone totally new. He’d read all about Multiple Personality Disorders. Xander had to be careful with her. Open her eyes slowly to the horrors of her past to remember why she’d be safer staying away. First, he’d reminded her that she wasn’t in control. The ace in his pocket had been the masquerade, with all the white masks—a desperate means to jar her memory.

He thought he’d broken through in the end. And still, she pursued.

Karinna must’ve sensed his intent.

He hadn’t banked on her mind-fucking him, instead.

Ruined buildings and graffiti gave way to trees and fields, and Xander slowed his flight as he approached the dark, winding road leading to the warehouse.

No lights shone out from the building. No surprise—monsters didn’t typically announce their presence. A quick check of his weapons—daggers at his thigh, across his chest, two Sigs strapped to each hip—and he took flight, landing quietly on the roof. Like a spider traipsing a web, he crawled over rotted wood until he reached a busted out window. Xander pawed past the sharp tines of broken glass, unlocking the way in, and lifted the pane to sneak inside.

He didn’t dare a breath as he prowled across the wooden planks of the upper floor, listening for voices.